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Four Types of Blogs and How To Use Them

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

Blogging clearly has arrived and is here to stay, according to the buzzword-slinging set. It’s the “next big thing” or the “wave of the future” – even a “revolution.” Still, most of the people commenting on the blogging trend aren’t sure exactly what it is, how it works or even what the different kinds of blogs are. Blogging already has taken a myriad of forms. Born when dial-up was still the standard, it came of age during the rise of broadband and now its text-based roots are giving way to podcasts and video blogging. To that end, here are a handful of blogging types and what sets them apart from the others.

Type 1 – Classic/Personal

This most basic blog type harkens back to the earliest days of Livejournal. These blogs serve as simple, personal accounts of thoughts and experiences. They’re records of the user’s life, things that interest him or appeal to her. They can record personal journeys both physical and mental, as in the case of blogging an exciting road trip or a reader’s attempt to get through the entire canon of a particular author.

Brand It: The real value of personal blogs is twofold. In our increasingly online culture, people have expressed feelings of isolation and disconnect from society. Thus, the thirst for personal information and details is growing. People want to hear personal stories from folks they are interested in, and these blogs give them a window into the humanity of others. Secondly, personal blogs that persist more than a year or two grow over time, maturing with the author. They change focus and grow more refined as time goes on, allowing the readers to have a sense of growing along with the subject of their reading. Thus, personal blogs can serve to help an established or even a growing brand make a personal connection right with its audience.

Type 2 – The Watchblog

It has been mentioned before, but blogging has some of the greatest potential to undermine corruption and totalitarianism ever seen. During the recent elections in Iran, bloggers brought out stories of abuse and corruption. Bloggers and their quick dissemination of information have exposed stories of police brutality, corporate misconduct and government gaffes overnight. There are entire blogs dedicated to exactly this kind of effort, carrying nothing but stories that expose the indefensible actions of those who cannot abide in a lawful society.

Brand It: The real power of this kind of blog in brand building is in the building up of public trust. Trust is fundamental to all business and branding. If there’s no trust in a brand, people simply won’t buy. Thus, people who expose breaches of this trust gain a certain level of credibility themselves. Similarly, this kind of blog can promote good conduct as well as expose bad conduct, creating a web of trusted providers that becomes mutually validating and prosperous.

Type 3 – Satire and Snark

Laughter is all-powerful. If a man argues with his opponent, he grants that opponent a certain level of respect; obviously the two viewpoints must be equal, or at least commensurate, or there would be no argument. However, if a man can get people to laugh at his opponent, then there need be no argument… ridicule does the work for him. Such is the power of a satirical blog. Whether done through biting and clever writing, simple sarcastic commentary or just posting ridiculous videos of politicians who betray their own ignorance, this kind of blog allows people to laugh at the matters presented and bring out a message by implication rather than overt pounding.

Brand It: One of the most powerful tools available in the world of blogging is the ability to laugh at oneself. People who have a sense of humor about their own failings are often conversely taken quite seriously. Point out a foible or two that popped up in recent meetings. Discuss hilarious absurdities in your industry. Take a famous mistake your advertising department made and have a laugh at it. Harness peoples’ desire to laugh, and you will genuinely have an audience worth keeping.

Type 4 – Interviewing

This is where blogging best shows its roots in classic journalism. An interview with an authority on some subject lends credibility to an article, and builds trust in the publication. As said above, people want to hear what others are thinking; they want that connection with the world around them. Having a more human element, interviews can provide this connection if handled well.

Brand it: The trick with interview-oriented blogs is to keep the material interesting for your audience. If a blog focusing on fashionable apparel were to interview an engineer on the scientific stresses that go into clothing fibers and manufacturing, most of the audience would probably fall asleep. On the other hand, if that same engineer were to explain in simple terms that the use of one fiber allows for thinner thread and thus smaller seams, and show the difference in two fashion photo spreads, that might interest the target audience more.

A Last Thought – It was touched on only briefly, but always remember that the blog is driven by audience expectations as much as by the focus of the brand itself. The brand exists in the mind of the audience or it doesn’t exist, so the blog must reflect that in tone and content. It’s also advisable to pick a type or even mix among the types in order to best capture these expectations, rather than choosing a type based solely on the projections of the brand.

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Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

How To Blog For 31 Days…And Why You Want To!

By Chris Makell in Featured

In July, I learned about blog “challenges” and was curious about them. From what I’d heard, website owners were having extraordinary success by participating in them. These results ranged from increased traffic, more subscribers to their lists, invitations to be guest bloggers on well-known sites, interviews for other business owners, etc. It sounded too good to be true…and like a lot of work! While I WAS blogging, I tried to be active about 2-3 times a week, not daily!

And so when a colleague of mine launched a blog challenge and invited me, I was skeptical that I could participate, though based on what I’d already heard about the benefits, I knew that I should. And I did.

The results were powerful! I’ve had a 72% increase in overall traffic to my website and a 70% increase in new visitors to the site. And this was in 31 days! But it was a bit daunting until I discovered a few “tricks” for making it easier on myself, so that I could stay excited about blogging daily.

If you’re ready to take on the challenge and increase traffic to your website, as well as explode your visibility to potential clients, then use these tips to help you leverage a blog to grow your business.

Tip #1 – Plan out some topics you’d like to talk about

Take 10 -15 minutes, sit down and just do a “brain dump” of all the things you could share with your readers. It could be lessons learned from your client interactions, questions you get from prospects and how you respond or how your clients get incredible results by taking the first step, etc.

Once you have the list, then take one, each day, to blog about. You’ll get the opportunity to teach more people and have them follow you to learn more. And where else will you find a platform to demonstrate how much you know and want to share with others – and they in turn will share what they like about it with others!

Tip #2 – Sharing is caring…

I don’t mean to get mushy here, however, sharing other people’s knowledge with your readers demonstrates that you care enough to help them learn “beyond” you. It’s natural to want to know it all and share it all so that people come to you. But your value grows exponentially when you expand THEIR knowledge by sharing more from other sources. Then you’re viewed as the “go to” resource to help people learn more and grow more. In addition, when you share someone else’s content, they will likely return the gesture. Now more people get to know who you are and what you offer.
Very cool!

Tip #3 – You can accomplish more than you think…

I was a little concerned about the 31 days of blogging and immediately began thinking of what I could “re-purpose” vs. create from scratch. And even then, I was nervous about “repeating” myself. And it didn’t help that I had a birthday and some travel in the midst of the 31 days! But you know what? As we all do, I rose to the occasion. You become more creative and committed when you start to see that you ARE blogging for 10 days, 20 days, etc. — consistently! It’s quite the feeling to look back and see what you’ve accomplished…so much so, that you’re committed to “not going back”. Not blogging will begin to feel unusual for me now.

Of course you should link your blog to the social media sites you participate in, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, so that more people become aware of all the great information you have to share with them!

Good luck and happy blogging!

P.S. – Here is why blogging is so cool…I re-purposed part of my post for this article…cool huh?

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Chris Makell, marketing mentor/coach, is particularly skilled at guiding her service professional clients to “Think Big…Play Bigger” and successfully create 6 & 7 figure businesses. Claim your free report “5 Critical Steps to Get High Paying Clients, Today” at radiancemarketing.com/specialreport/

15 DoFollow Blog Commenting Tips That Will Instantly Get Your Comments Approved

By Dele Ojewumi in Featured

We all know that dofollow blog commenting is a great way of getting backlinks pointing to your website, which in turn ultimately boosts your website’s page rank and indeed improves your keyword ranking. We all also know how difficult it can be to identify high pagerank dofollow blogs for blog commenting. It therefore stands to reason that once identified, you should take all necessary steps to ensure your blog commenting achieves result by your comments being approved.

How do you increase the chances of your blog comments being approved? By taking the following steps:

1. Read all or scan a reasonable portion of the blog post you intend to comment on so that you are abreast with the contents and so you are able to make a reasonable blog comment.

2. Identify and target blogs whose content theme you are reasonably comfortable with and in respect of which you possess some knowledge and experience as a basis for making a reasonable comment.

3. Your comment must be directly related to the post you are trying to comment on and refer to or reply directly to the content of the post. This will make the webmaster know that you have actually read his post. As a result, general comments such as “Great post, will visit your site again”, “This subject is very interesting and you have explained it thoroughly” etc are indicative of spam comments and any experienced webmaster will immediately trash such comments.

4. Insert your actual first name in the name space as most webmasters do not like approving comments with only keywords inserted into the name field. To get SEO benefits, you can go ahead and use the keyword luv plugin so that your name can be inserted as “name @ keyword” or use a format such as “name | keyword” in the name field.

5. For some blogs, there is a space restriction for the name field and if you intend to gain SEO advantages here, you must pick either your main keyword (which is likely to be very short) alone, if that particular website allows such or you are restricted to using your first name alone but of course with backlink pointing to your website.

6. Search for dofollow blogs that were recently commented on. This considerably increases the chances of your blog comment being approved as some blogs are either no longer functioning or comments are closed on some old posts or the webmaster may not be inclined to accept new comments on these old posts.

7. Search for posts that are just published. This is similar to the above but not exactly so in that here, reference is to more or less real time posts which is best gotten through setting Google alerts. As these posts are fresh, the webmaster is likely to be inclined to approving fairly well written comments unlike later on when comments on the blog post may have become saturated.

8. Search for blogs that use the “comment luv”, “keyword luv”, “top commenters” wordpress plugins. These blogs more than others are more comment friendly and your comments therefore have a greater chance of being approved.

9. For some blogs, you should not link to an unduly long url such that occurs with some inner pages. This is because some blogs regard such links as spam.

10. Do not make more than one comment on a particular blog per day. This is because some webmasters regard an attempt to do otherwise as an attempt to spam their blog with comments.

11. Use a true picture of yourself as your avatar i.e. get a gravatar. Most webmasters and indeed most sites generally look more favorably on a commenter who reflects his actual picture and regard such comments as more credible. He is thought not to have anything to hide unlike most commenters who hide behind “masks”.

12. Before making your comment, compliment the effort of the webmaster on the usefulness of the post. We are all human and a little massaging of ego does help to get your comment approved. Do not stop here however but go on to now make a direct comment on some particular aspect of the post, otherwise, stopping at merely massaging the webmaster’s ego will be regarded as spam by most webmasters.

13. Where you can make reference to another blog post, article or news item to buttress your comment, by all means please do, as you come out as highly informed this way and increase your chances of being favorably looked upon by the webmaster.

14. Your website should portray seriousness which can be depicted by good number of backlinks, fair PR level, reasonable volume of posts on your own blog etc. as most webmasters first take a look at your blog/website via your link before approving your comment.

15. Search for blogs that have a good history of approving reasonably well written comments which you can deduce from previous comments on the blog as some webmasters are just difficult and unfriendly and no matter what you do, will not approve comments from those they do not know.

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Dele Ojewumi is an affiliate marketer and the webmaster of => homebiz-supermarket.com/profitable-business-ideas where you can find home business ideas and opportunities. He is the author of the popular internet’s most-up-to-date-list of 165 top article directories => homebiz-supermarket.com/profitable-business-ideas/201
0/10/top-article-directories with clickable links, classified into dofollow and nofollow.

My Tactics for Getting Those Top 5 Spots in Google

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

Actually, getting in the #1 spot is best, but I will settle for the top 5 or even anywhere on the first page for very competitive keywords. Obtaining those top rankings for your targeted keywords in Google will obviously be very important to achieving your online goals.

I don’t have some magic formula, just online marketing stuff that works. Very simple stuff that everyone can do to get those top rankings. Here are some of the tactics/things I do:

- article marketing through the free article directories

- create videos on my niche products

- make blog posts in my niche areas

- do press releases for my targeted products

- create free ebook guides on my subject areas

- build separate lists for each major niche market with follow-up emails

- participate in online forums with my sig links added

5 Blog Post Styles to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

By Clare Swindlehurst in Featured

Keeping your blog interesting and fresh isn’t just a case of posting regularly, you also need to mix things up and use different styles of posts to keep your readers engaged. Here are five different styles you can try out to make your blog more interesting.

1. The inspection post

One of the easiest ways to make money with your blog is to review products that then pay you a commission for any sales that you make. The inspection post is one where you take a closer look at a product and review it for your readers.

An effective inspection post will cover the positives as well as the negatives. People want to know what’s good and bad about a product before they buy it and the more honest you are the more likely they are to buy the product through your affiliate link.

2. The insights post

Offering insights to your readers is a great way to write an engaging and interesting post. Sometimes you might have a great tip to share that doesn’t warrant a whole article but would make a great short post. Say you blog about cake baking, a useful insights post could be as simple as instructions on how to grease a muffin pan so that the muffins turn out easily. You can add even more interest by making a short video to show your readers how it’s done.

3. The index post

Readers love lists. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 15 Great Ways to Build Traffic to Your Website or the Top 10 Kitchen Utensils Every Baker Needs. Whatever niche you are in you will be able to compile a useful index post. These resource lists are popular because they are easy to scan and can help people find the information they need quickly and easily.

The other great thing about index posts is that they have the potential to go viral. People love to share index posts with their friends via Facebook, Twitter or the other social networking sites, compile a useful list and before you know it you will have a whole new set of visitors.

4. The interview post

Interviews are a great source of interesting and engaging content for your blog. You could offer to interview an expert in your niche, or the author of a useful book. It will take some work to set up the interview as you will need to contact prospective interviewees to ask them to take part. Once they’re on board you simply need to compile an interesting list of questions and ask them to complete the answers by email for publication on your blog.

5. The instruction post

People turn to the Internet when they want to know how to do something. So instruction posts can be really useful. Spend some time in the forums and see what problems people have and then create a blog post walking them through the solution step-by-step. Including screenshots or images can help to get your message across, and videos are even better.

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Finally, don’t forget that traffic is the life blood of any online business. To discover 26 ways you can drive targeted traffic to your website without spending a penny visit http://ultimatetrafficmaster.com/ today.

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A Quick Guide To Help You Social Bookmark Your Blog Posts

By Matt Helphrey in Featured

Those that are currently using social bookmarking certainly understand the great benefits that it can bring if done correctly. Social bookmarking though is quite an enigma to beginners. Many new bloggers have heard the term social bookmarking but are not quite sure what it is or what it involves.

Let me first start by explaining what social bookmarking is and why it is important to social bookmark all of your blog posts. Quite simply stated, social bookmarking will bring your blog more traffic. As internet marketers, that it exactly what we are all after. Social bookmark sites allow us to share our favorite sites with others who might be interested as well as increasing our back links at the same time.

Every time you bookmark a post, that link has the potential to bring a good amount of traffic to your blog. As you begin to regularly submit your link to authority social bookmarking sites, like Digg, Twitter, and Stumbleupon, your blog will benefit greatly by moving up rank rapidly in the search engines for your selected keywords.

Now just a quick tutorial on how to easily social bookmark your blog posts.

First, what you need to do is find a list of some social bookmark sites. There are plenty around, just do a Google search or go to SocialMarker.com.

Now you have to take the time to enroll at each site. This process may take up to an hour but keep in mind that you are only going to have to go through this process one time.

Once you have enrolled in all 40 or so social sites it’s time to submit your first blog post. The easiest way to do this is to type out your blog posts url, title, description, and tags in a separate window, preferably in Notepad, Article Notepad, or Wordpad. Any of the above will work.

Once you have the info typed out, go ahead and cascade the notepad and your browser so that they are side by side on your monitor. (If you are using SocialMarker you won’t have to use this method.)

Make sure the list of social sites is up and open on your browser, then right click and open the first ten or so sites in a new tab. If your computer is fast enough you can go ahead and open all the sites. If not, just open as much as your computer will allow.

Now all you have to do is click and drag the required info when submitting your blog post.

When you are done submitting all the necessary info with one, close it and move on to the next.

That’s it! That’s all that is involved with social bookmarking. A simple little task like this may take an hour a day but will greatly increase the amount of traffic you receive to your blog.

Keep in mind though that some social sites will penalize you for submitting too many of your own blog posts. Try to form a network of peers and take turns submitting each others blog posts to reduce this risk.

Whatever you do, do not under estimate the power of social bookmarking. Try to make it a point to submit one blog post a day. Doing so will really make a huge difference in the traffic you’re going to see as a result.

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Matt Helphrey invites you to follow his footsteps as he takes on his life ambition of making a full time income using the internet. Sign up today to receive free internet income training!

Blog Posts that Get Attention

By Sharon Housley in Featured

Blogs are now a dime a dozen, and bloggers need to make their blog posts stand out. Developing a blog following is not as easy as it once was. Learn how to write blog posts that attract readers and retain their attention. Follow these guidelines to cultivate readers…

1. Draw Attention

Use titles to attract the reader’s attention to the blog post. The title should mimic newspaper headlines and generate interest in the blog post. The title can be controversial, but not to the extent of being misleading. Use action words in the title. Bloggers will often come up with a handful of potential titles for blog posts, and then settle on the title that is best suited to a particular blog post.

2. Deliver

Having a catchy title, but following it with content that fails to deliver, will not endear you to your readers. The blog content must deliver what is promised in the blog title, or readers will unsubscribe and stop reading. When deciding on a blog title, do not stray too far from the content, as the two are intricately related — the title will attract the reader’s attention, but the content must then live up to expectations… or the blogger’s reputation will suffer.

3. Accurate

Nothing stains a blogger’s reputation like inaccurate information, so be sure that your blog posts contain accurate information. Intentionally posting inaccurate or false information will significantly damage a blogger’s reputation. But if an error unintentionally or inadvertently occurs in a blog post, be sure to quickly post a retraction or correction, along with an explanation and an apology in order to salvage your good reputation.

4. Relevant & Timely

Blog posts should always be relevant and timely. Hearing about something long after it has occurred will not captivate readers. Blog about information that is occurring in the here and now. If you are going to write something that is no longer timely, be sure to add some sort of twist, or include new or updated information to make it relevant.

5. On Topic

All blogs should have a general theme that connects all the posts on the blog. Readers will expect posts that are related, so stay true to the blog’s theme and topic.

6. Use Keywords

Use keywords liberally in blog posts. Search engines will attempt to categorize the content of a blog post and discern its general topic. By including related keywords or keyword phrases, search engines will have an easier time classifying the blog’s contents. Additionally, a blog that uses keywords will have a better chance of ranking well for those keywords or keyword phrases in organic search listings.

7. Evaluate Web Logs

Review web logs to determine what blog posts have been popular with readers. Then figure out how to provide similar or related content that might also be of interest to those readers.

8. Original

Blog posts should always contain original and unique content. If you are simply re-posting information from others, include editorial content or a different spin to the information. Readers do not want to constantly rehash the same information — they are interested in reading new material.

9. Chunky Content

Break content into smaller, readable chunks. Most website visitors will just scan paragraphs for information, and very few will take the time to read all the words contained in a post. Use bulleted lists, or break web copy into paragraphs with bolded sub-topics that appear before the paragraphs.

Writing blog posts is not just about spewing forth content. The best blogs are well thought out, and contain provocative and interesting unique content. Follow the above steps to produce a relevant blog worth reading.

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

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